Universities have focused on teaching and learning at a time when quality has become the marker of distinction in international higher education markets. Education markets have meant pedagogical relations have become contractualised with a focus on student satisfaction, exemplified in consumer‐oriented generic evaluations of teaching. This article argues, by analysing one example, that generic evaluations are more about accountability and marketing than about improvement of teaching and learning. Furthermore, what students want is not the only criterion for judging teaching. Rather, professionals require, as do academics, a capacity for critical judgement about what constitutes valued knowledge in the pedagogical relationship between teacher and student.